There are so many of these sort of threads and I really tried to find the info I need by reading through the others, but I'm so confused by what's going on with my laptop that I'm not even sure what the problem is that I'd need to sort. I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this and would just love some hints on what to do next!

I logged on to my laptop to find that my desktop hadn't loaded and the screen was black, and I got a message saying that windows explorer had stopped working and had to close. Then the screen flashed blue and the system restarted. From that point, I haven't even been able to log in without it bluescreening and restarting.

Using safe mode and system restore from a windows disk I'm now at the stage where if I log in using safe mode no blue screen appears and I have my toolbars and program shortcuts on the desktop back, but I still can't log in without safe mode. I worked out my McAfee has been damaged in some way and wouldn't run scans, so thought it may have been a virus that caused the issue. Using a norton disc, I found a trojan and removed it - I tried to install the norton properly but despite using the removal tool I can't get ride of McAfee enough for Norton to work.

I'm now at a loss of what to do to stop my computer bluescreening when it's not in safe mode. System restore didn't fix it, getting rid of the virus didn't fix it, Start-up Repair tells me it can't detect a problem, the Dell diagnostics disk couldn't find a problem...I noticed that the Norton disc was up to date for viruses up to May2010, so should I keep trying to get rid of McAfee so I can install it, get the updates and check for any more viruses? If so, how?

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I apologise if there's an obvious answer, I'm just so muddled by going in circles with it all for days!
Ta, Kirsty